SoVote

Context: House Hansard - 337 - Sep/17/24

Ms. Leah Taylor Roy (Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, Lib.)

Sep/17/24 11:08:29 a.m.
Watch

Madam Speaker, it is an honour to be back in the House and hopefully debate things that are of real concern to our constituents. This summer I spoke to many of them, and not one person talked about ArriveCAN, other than to say that they had used it when they came back from a trip and that it actually facilitates re-entry into the country. We heard from the member opposite that this is hard-earned taxpayers' money, and I agree wholeheartedly with that. I wonder if my colleague could address the costs to Canadians of this kind of filibustering and what the Conservative Party has done over the past year in this House, such as having us sit late to hear ridiculous debates on issues that do not matter to most Canadians.

133 words

Context: House Hansard - 337 - Sep/17/24

Ms. Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné (Terrebonne, BQ)

Sep/17/24 11:41:18 a.m.
Watch

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my honourable and extraordinary colleague from Beauport—Limoilou. It is always difficult to speak after her, given her vast knowledge of the subject. I would also like to congratulate Louis-Philippe Sauvé on his victory this morning. I send out 8,884 thank yous to the people who placed their trust in Louis-Philippe and the Bloc Québécois. They do not have to worry, we are there for them. A few months ago, the Office of the Auditor General submitted a report on the management of the ArriveCAN app. To quote the Auditor General, management of the app was the worst she had seen in her career. The ArriveCAN app, which was to have cost $80,000, ended up costing taxpayers $60 million. In the same report, we learned that one company composed of two people was paid $19.1 million for ArriveCAN. That company is GC Strategies. We also learned that the ArriveCAN affair is only the tip of the iceberg. After putting several questions to the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates and the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, of which I am a member, the comptroller general revealed that GC Strategies and its former incarnation Coredal had obtained contracts worth almost $108 million since 2011. Manual searches show that there were probably other contracts as well. In other words, at least $108 million was paid in recent years to a two-person company that did not deliver any services. We also learned from the Auditor General's report on ArriveCAN, as well as from several witnesses, that there were whiskey tastings, dinners and golf tournaments, dozens of events attended by public servants. Kristian Firth stood here at the bar of the House of Commons. We called him in. I asked him how many gifts in cash or in kind he had offered public servants. In an arrogant tone, he replied that he had not offered any gifts to public servants. I challenged him. Do whiskey tastings not count? Do dinners not count? Do golf tournaments not count? Mr. Firth replied that yes, there had been certain events. That is what we got from Kristian Firth. We never got a clear answer from him. Worse yet, the government never admitted to any real problems with our procurement system. We are still waiting. That admission should have been made as soon as the report on ArriveCAN was published. A decision should have been made to reform the procurement system. To get back to Kristian Firth, he refused to answer several questions. I gave an example. He compromised the parliamentarians' work by not submitting the documents requested on time. He even lied in committee. In particular, he refused to submit the list of public servants with whom he had worked, a list we have since received but that is incomplete. Clearly, if it has come to this, there are huge problems with procurement. The government has been operating this way for at least 15 years. It is so difficult to do business with the government, to enter into contracts with the government, that some companies—we are talking about GC Strategies, but we know there are others—set up a kind of unit that signs the contract but then delegates the work. In some cases, it is not even the company, it is not even GC Strategies that finds the expertise, but the government itself. Take the case of KPMG, which was considered as a company that could provide services needed by the government. KPMG was called by a government official who told them that the government was not going to sign the contract directly with them, even though it could. The government was going to go through GC Strategies, which ended up pocketing a commission for doing absolutely nothing. What we have here is a company that profited from a broken system and pushed things to the extreme. GC Strategies received most of its contracts from the Canada Border Services Agency for the ArriveCAN app. It was awarded a number of these contracts untendered, while others were obtained via a rigged tendering process. We now have the evidence. A tendering process was rigged so that GC Strategies would be the only successful bidder. In the case of KPMG, GC Strategies received $84,000 while offering absolutely no service as part of the contract between the government and KPMG. Why did the public servant do this? Why does the system allow this? The motion presented for our consideration calls on the Auditor General to conduct a performance audit, on a priority basis, of all payments made to GC Strategies and Coredal, including all contracts with departments, agencies and Crown corporations. As we know, it can be difficult to see what is going on in these agencies and Crown corporations. They consider themselves independent, even though they receive taxpayer money. This makes it difficult to obtain information from them, but that is why they are included in this motion. They too must be accountable. In the case at hand, we would like to know how many other cases there were. The ArriveCAN app is just the tip of the iceberg. For example, we know that there was the KPMG contract I just spoke about, but how many other cases were there like that? How many other times did the government find a company that could provide a service, consultants or people who could truly provide the product the government needed, only to end up with GC Strategies? That is theft. When someone provides no service and receives money for doing absolutely nothing, that is called theft. It is theft of taxpayer money, something the Liberals seem to forget on occasion. Kristian Firth justified his hourly rate of $2,600 by the fact that he was not doing a nine-to-five job. He claimed to have issued over 1,500 invoices per month, maintaining that the amount suddenly increased in the case of ArriveCAN. The contract we are talking about went from $2.35 million to $13.9 million, and again, no service was provided. According to the witness, in the entire history of federal contracts with GC Strategies, the gross margin for all 65 contracts signed with the federal government is approximately 21%. I gave a few examples. GC Strategies was just a shell company that enabled the government to enter into contracts. We do not know why the government used GC Strategies, but the company was pocketing an average of 21% a contract. The two owners of GC Strategies, Kristian Firth and Darren Anthony, met when they were both employees of Veritaaq Technology House, where they worked until 2010. The witness was therefore working for that company when its directors pleaded guilty to bid-rigging in 2009. At that time, the judge ordered that all employees, including Mr. Firth and Mr. Anthony, be given training on bid-rigging. However, we now know that they engaged in bid-rigging to win a multi-million dollar contract from the CBSA for the ArriveCAN app. From the motion and from everything I said, it is clear that we urgently need to know the extent of the damage caused by GC Strategies for the government. GC Strategies obtained at least $108 million. How much of that can we potentially get back? In the case of GC Strategies, there has obviously been a breach of trust and theft. That is a strong word that I am using. However, the following is clear. In the report of the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates that we are discussing today, we may be asking the Auditor General of Canada to study the issue and conduct a performance audit to get a clearer idea, but we are obviously not directing the Auditor General, far from it. We cannot make repeated requests like others do all the time and like a certain party enjoys doing by bombarding the Office of the Auditor General of Canada with requests for studies when it already has so much on its plate. I am therefore adding a bit of nuance because, as the Auditor General of Canada pointed out, she does not have additional funding for all the extra studies she is being asked to do. Nevertheless, and this is the most important point of my speech, the report of the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates was unanimously adopted because it embodies the feelings of our constituents, the taxpayers who felt cheated in this matter. It epitomizes the anger, it must be said, of the people who talk to us back home on the ground about the story of ArriveCAN and GC Strategies. No one understands how this could have happened. We were cheated by a procurement system that needs to be overhauled. It is the right thing to do. I would really like the government to truly take responsibility, as my colleague from Beauport-Limoilou said, and acknowledge the fact that GC Strategies is a perfect example of the fact that there is a real problem in the federal procurement system.

1536 words

Context: House Hansard - 337 - Sep/17/24

Mr. Brian Masse

Sep/17/24 12:17:03 p.m.
Watch

Madam Speaker, it was interesting as we all toured throughout Canada for a full year on copyright. I appreciate the member's interventions. It is a highly complicated and tough issue that still resurfaces. He made a good point that there can be innovation on the border. To bring it back to what is really important, that is what the ArriveCAN application was to do: to make things flow better and so forth. ArriveCAN was a problematic application. I want to focus also on making sure we have boots on the ground with regard to the CBSA officers. We are short right now, because of COVID, by over 2,000 to 3,000 officers at the border. Even with an application like ArriveCAN, or a new one, and there has been some advancement on a number of different things, if we don't the right equipment and enough officers then it is a huge problem. A good example we hear about is auto theft. They actually moved the equipment from Windsor to Montreal because they could not, or would not, fix the equipment in Montreal. We have to fund the border properly. We still need boots on the ground, so to speak.

202 words

Context: House Hansard - 337 - Sep/17/24

Mr. Terry Duguid

Sep/17/24 7:38:32 p.m.
Watch

Madam Speaker, perhaps the hon. member did not hear me. Just to repeat what I said, the Government of Canada is committed to ensuring that Canadian tax dollars are used wisely and responsibly. The issues that have emerged around the procurement of professional IT services and the management of the ArriveCAN application are indeed deeply troubling. We know from the reports of various investigations into the matter that Canada's procurement system can be strengthened and improved, and that is exactly what we are doing. Budget 2024 outlines the important steps we are taking to enforce and uphold the highest standards of procurement to ensure sound stewardship of public funds. We will continue to actively explore all possible ways to further bolster our processes. We are working relentlessly to make sure that what happened in the case of ArriveCAN does not happen again.

143 words